A Field Guide to Mythological Birds
by Lieyan
Summary: Peacetime is just another battleground for the soul. / Gen, set post-series.


**A Field Guide to Mythological Birds**

Peacetime is just another battleground for the soul. (Gen, set post-series.)

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**1. hou-ou, the phoenix**

The apartment is bare, but from the doorway he can still see the marks where the previous tenant's personal furniture used to be – indents in the carpet matching an armchair, a standing lamp, a table. There are small holes here and there on the walls in rectangular patches of paint that hasn't faded. He guesses a portrait, a scroll, a painting. His flatmate has yet to arrive but they've sent a few emails back and forth, exchanged numbers. Daisuke seems like a nice enough guy, probably doesn't know a thing about Hollows. He doesn't feel one way or another about that, only a vague sense of trepidation at explaining his nighttime disappearances, because Asahikawa is bound to have Hollows, too, and spirits in need of defending.

He slings his duffel bag onto the floor and it lands with a thump next to the cardboard boxes that contain the rest of his things. It's late afternoon, and the sunlight glows in dusty white curtains. A spring breeze outside shakes the branches of a tree, sending dappled shadows across the floor. The worn carpet is gentle against his feet. He inspects the window for a latch, unlocks it, and slides the panel on the right open. The sound of rustling leaves pours into the room, and for a moment he expects his hair to brush against his face. When it doesn't, he automatically touches his head again, palms pricked by short hairs cut an inch from his scalp. _You're a long way from home, Ichigo. _He sighs and rolls his shoulders.

"Hey, Kurosaki." Daisuke is in the doorway, unloading. He's a slim guy with short dark hair, and from the looks of it a few inches shorter than he is.

"Fujimori," he says, lowering his arms as his flatmate fumbles with his bag. "Need help?"

"Sure. Can you take this box? Careful. That's our silverware."

They talk as they unpack their things, sometimes from across the apartment, exchanging anecdotes about the ride up – neither of them are from Hokkaido – and strike up an easy rapport. Daisuke is level-headed, with a good sense of humor, and as they venture into talking about classes, he shows that he's knowledgeable too, and competent.

"You have plans for residency yet?" Daisuke calls from the kitchen unit.

"My old man runs a clinic back in Tokyo, so I'm set," he says, laying out clothes in his dresser drawer. "I'm probably going to take over the business when he's too old and decrepit to remember how to take an x-ray, much less wrap a sprain."

"Bet you didn't grow up thinking you'd be a doctor."

"What makes you say that?" His hands stop moving, not that Daisuke can see, and he looks at the stack of drawers in front of him.

"I dunno, you seem like the delinquent type," he laughs. "I mean, look at your hair."

"It's not bleached, if that's what you're thinking." He stuffs another pair of socks into the corner of the drawer. "It just grows that way."

"Well, at least you cut it. Imagine if you had _locks _of hair, Kurosaki. Less med student and more high school punk."

Shadows slink across the rooms and then the light fades completely, leaving them to turn on the lights as they eat and talk.

It occurs to him as he is lying in bed, staring up at an unfamiliar ceiling, that he's settled into their banter and jokes so easily, like Daisuke's an old friend. He is nineteen now. It's been a year since the Vandenreich invasion and Ginjou, three years since the last confrontation with Aizen, and a little less than four years since Kuchiki Rukia first stabbed him with her zanpakutou. He's spent years fighting and killing and protecting, and sometimes he wonders how no one can read the number of people who have died off of his face. But Daisuke doesn't know. Daisuke sleeps soundly and snores and wouldn't be able to sense a Hollow if it shrieked in his ear. It's almost unreal. So much of his life is cordoned off from the rest of the world. It's like he's closed the door to a house full of secrets behind him.

_This is what you wanted,_ he reminds himself. _A fresh start._

That's what this is supposed to be. Karakura is a blanket that he thrashed around in during his nightmares, twisting it tight on his arms and legs like a straitjacket until he woke up. He doesn't resent it, doesn't hate it, just needs to get out and away and touch his weary shoulders to remind himself that the burden has lessened until he's ready to go back. The shapes of the buildings are strange enough to let his mind rest from the memories. Asahikawa is more gentle, more open, full of spaces. There are more trees here. Zangetsu should be happy.

When he crossed the strait to Hokkaido he felt his soul grow lighter. Now he's in a new town and it doesn't remind him of shinigami everywhere he goes, or of the Hollows of people he once knew, or expectant faces that he can't bear to look at anymore. No, too many memories in Karakura, too much grief. It's distant now, a faint throb in the back of his heart and head, obscured by the haze of distance. For now, it's just him. There's no thrill, no anticipation, no eagerness to get on with life. Just relief, gray and calm like a sigh, and a great weight lifted from his shoulders. It's as if he is rising from the dirt like all of the plants of spring after a long, dark night.

He only half-listens for the sounds of a Hollow as he falls asleep.

**2. shitakiri suzume, the tongue-cut sparrow**

The argument escalates quickly.

"_It's not that hard, Megumi! Wash your fucking shit instead of leaving us to clean your mess! I'm not your mom and I'm not going to do your fucking dishes!"_

"_Excuse me? Who paid your share of the rent last month? Do you remember? It was me. And you have the nerve to get pissy about putting soap on a fucking bowl. My little brother doesn't give me as much shit as you do about chores, and he's not even a legal adult. Grow the fuck up, you complete child."_

It doesn't happen that often, but her roommates slip into arguments about petty things that shake the walls of their tiny apartment. She's sure all of the neighbors can hear, but of course none of them are going to say anything about it in public and the two girls will slowly reconcile with each other over the next few days through little gestures and concessions. She has a feeling that this would all be much more familiar if she hadn't been living on her own since Sora died. His picture is still with her, on her bedside table, even though (maybe especially because) she's moved from Karakura to Bunkyou and nothing else is the same.

She's stopped trying to mediate, and sits in her bedroom with her laptop, music blasting into her headphones as she hums along. When they fight like this, they're not actually disagreeing. They just want to fight. Both of the girls are rather bullheaded and obstinate. They remind her of Ichigo sometimes.

"_How did your parents manage to raise you to be such an entitled bitch? I swear – "_

Megumi storms into the room and slams the door behind her, sitting on her bed and fuming for a few long minutes before taking a few deep breaths and coming over to sit next to her. Orihime takes off her headphones.

"Sorry, Hime-chan," she says, fidgeting with her slender fingers. "I know it bothers you when we fight."

"It's okay!" Because it's always okay, even when they're hurling epithets at each other like spears. "I know you and Ayako-chan try to get along."

Megumi gives her a half-smile and the mattress creaks as rises.

She closes her eyes and clasps her hands across the back of her neck, bowing her head. Everything has changed so quickly during these last few months. She hasn't seen Tatsuki or Chizuru in weeks, even though they attend the same university. Todai's undergraduate population is something like twenty thousand, and she's been so busy with work and school and her roommates –

Sora shielded her from the worst of her parents' behavior, and the friends she made in high school rarely argued seriously. Ichigo and Uryuu at their worst never went at each other like this, digging their fingers into each others' faults and tearing at them with a ferocity that reminds her of Hollows. It's an ugly comparison to make and she immediately regrets it. Ayako and Megumi aren't corrupted or evil. They're trying to find a place in the world, just like her.

Straightening her back, she opens her eyes and turns her head to look at Sora's picture, then at the city through her window. It's dark, but lights are glittering in elegant gold chains against the dark blue sky, and for a moment she can convince herself that Karakura will greet her when she goes downstairs in the morning.

One thing that has always mystified her is why people pick fights with each other. She's always been _sensitive. _It's a derisive way of saying that she understands the emotional states of others and empathizes more quickly than most of her peers. She understands the destructive force of anger and the overwhelming nature of sorrow, but even more than that she understands pain, the feeling of insults pricking at volatile self-esteem, of rejection and condescension. On a purely intellectual level she knows that fights are a way to release emotional stress and aggressively pursue closure, that they're a coping measure, but to actively seek to tear another person down and inflict pain – that is something completely unknowable. Tsubaki constantly berated her for this but even he knew back during the Winter War that violence fuelled by anger was completely contrary to her nature.

The thing is, though, that she's discovering more and more a violent and vindictive side to herself. It doesn't even scare her. It's not active, and it's not aggressive. The difference is that she doesn't know anyone that would die for her here, and these new relationships are difficult to navigate. A still river with a hidden current instead of a heaving, roiling sea. Ayako wasn't there when Ichigo was shot through the chest by an Arrancar (which she's had nightmares about more than once). Megumi has never seen a Hollow, much less had to protect herself from one (she's met the shinigami patrolling Bunkyou and they're quite capable). She can't be vulnerable to them because they won't protect her. Their friendship hasn't been tested by the fires of agony and death. These are fragile bonds, as best she knows, and she has had to take as well as give because she doesn't trust as easily as she did in high school and there's no one but her to look out for herself anymore.

She's a black belt. She knows that force has to be controlled and directed to be effective. It doesn't take more than a fist to the jaw to flatten the man who tries to grope her her on the train.

By increments, she has been changing into someone more reserved, more quick to act in defense. It's exhausting. She comes home tired every day, wishing she could drop the shields she's had to put up and have a conversation without measuring it against previous ones to predict the best response. When she talks to Tatsuki she can be as talkative and oblivious as she wants. When she talks to Ayako she has to be aware of boundaries of behavior that can't be crossed, emotional barriers that she has to avoid. Ayako's gentle nature seems to change when she argues, and Orihime thinks during those times that she doesn't know her at all, only the minefield of her defenses and angers and irritations.

Her neck aches. She considers texting Tatsuki and Chizuru to meet for lunch tomorrow.

**3. yousuzume, the night sparrow**

On more than one occasion, Chad has had to hold Shunichi's head above the toilet as he purges a ridiculous amount of alcohol from his stomach. More frequently, he has to clean up the mess after his roommate vomits on the floor. Shunichi is a social drinker who doesn't know his limits and can't hold his beer. He's twenty, which means he can actually go to bars, but Chad often has to accompany him to make sure he doesn't get totally smashed before an exam. When Shunichi is groaning like a dying man on the kitchen floor after his latest binge, Chad is comforted by the thought that he'll be able to hold it over his head even after they're both long dead. Other than that, when he's sober, their roles are reversed and Shunichi mothers Chad even when they both know he's completely capable of doing whatever Shunichi is bothering him about.

It's a drastic change of pace from home, but at the same time, it isn't. He's had ample opportunity to protect and be protected. By the measure of ordinary humans, he's quite strong, and his struggles in war have given him an air that deters the usual drunkards and bullies from picking fights with him, even if they sneer at his skin and hair. He gets angry at the comments, naturally, because they are absurd. If he finds strength in his memories of his grandfather, the man he calls _abuelo_ and not _ojii-san,_ and in his heritage, and that strength allows him to help keep the world from falling apart – well, he's hated bullies since he learned not to be one, anyway.

He has his friends, some enemies, but he's happy. It's a strange feeling. So many people have died in the last three years that at some points he didn't know if he would ever be able to feel carefree again. He's gotten used to carrying the burden, it seems. It's still there, but its weight is forgotten in intense discussions of classwork and politics and science and philosophy and sometimes even manga. He cracks jokes more often, tries to be more adventurous. He remembers Inoue Orihime and her vivacity and enthusiasm for the new and mysterious, and makes an effort to reach out. He finds that he enjoys being social, finding the idiosyncrasies in other peoples' personalities, working out what makes them passionate, what makes them laugh, what they think about the world.

For so long it's just been a continual uphill battle – get stronger, get stronger, get stronger. Don't be a burden. And now there's no one to be a burden to except himself, and he's navigating a much more complicated and variable terrain now, inhabited by all sorts of strange and fantastic people.

Shunichi coaches him through his first breakup. The coaching involves imbibing alcohol, which is a constant in all of Shunichi's tips and advisings, a drunken talk that neither of them understood when sober but was very therapeutic anyway, and a three-hour run on some generic shoot-'em-up on Shunichi's gaming console.

There are some things that keep coming back. Dreams, for one thing, memories replaying of the Vandenreich invasion, of preventable deaths, blood pouring from ugly wounds that gape like mouths. Shunichi has had to shake him out of particularly bad dreams a few times. He never asks what they are, and Chad never thinks of telling him. These memories are something he shares with only a few people on this planet, and even though they leave him shaking and sweating, they remind him of bonds that extend past friendship, past lifetimes.

"Look what I haaaave," Shunichi sing-songs as he reaches into the refrigerator. His face is completely red and a vein or two is bulging in his forehead under a dark fringe of hair. He has a sizable audience, as usual – Chad, Hajime, Izumi, Ichirou, Jun and Satoshi are seated on the living room floor in various states of repose with mildly alcoholic beverages in their hands. Shunichi pulls out a carton of shochu. Chad swears up and down that he never saw him bring it into the apartment.

They talk easily, joke easily, mock each other mercilessly. He knows them well, thinks each of them are fascinating in their own right. He loves the intricacy of their personalities, none quite like the other.

He remembers, every so often, usually when he's alone and working on some problem set or reading some required material and his mind wanders, that he doesn't even know them as well as he does Kurosaki Ichigo. Even Ishida, who seemingly specializes in avoiding human interaction when he's in a sour mood and isn't much of a conversation starter at his best, is more familiar to him than even Shunichi.

As a child, he'd never really known his parents. He had memories, faint ones, but when it came down to it, he couldn't remember who they were, what they looked like, what their voices sounded like. It scared him. _Lejos de los ojos, lejos del corazón, _his grandfather said. _Those who are long absent are the ones we soon forget. That's the way things go. _But he doesn't think he agrees with that, not really. He hasn't forgotten the people he fought with. If anything he loves them more fiercely now than ever, holds them closer, knowing what they've sacrificed for this tentative peace, for just a few bad dreams.

He's still grieving. But grief has become just one of many acquaintances, and he is rediscovering joy.

**4. yatagarasu, the three-legged crow**

The commute from Karakura to Shinjuku is a little less than an hour both ways. He passes through the stations as if he's surrounded by ghosts – the crowd is there, but only at the periphery of his senses where his mind can play tricks on him. Lecture halls are much the same. He is noted for extreme precision in his laboratorial work. He finishes the first practical exam without so much as a moment of hesitation. He's commended for his work ethic and diligence, and academically he stands head and shoulders above his peers.

He gets messages from the Urahara Shop about Hollows late at night, once in a while, mostly on weekends. He's not in the area, otherwise. Usually in the lab, in the library, on the train. He reads issues of _Bunsei Kagaku _and _Gakujutsu Geppo _from decades long past, old scientific journals written by faceless men who still had black hair in those days, and glasses with round frames. Is it so frightening that he sees Ryuuken in the worn print? Is it too strange to look at himself in the mirror and think that when his hair turns white, he'll look more like him?

These thoughts are familiar and one night, as he boils water for ramen, he remembers that this is what he used to think about when he was younger and determined to be the exact opposite of his father. Before he entered high school. Before he met, among others, Kurosaki Ichigo. His life has adopted a certain kind of symmetry along the axis of the wars, and as the passing days push them further and further away from the present, he finds himself unexpectedly but predictably alone.

He's always been an insular kind of person. It's not out of some kind of misanthropic hatred of interaction. He simply doesn't tend to his social duties with the same careful scrutiny that all of his peers seem to possess. He hasn't touched his phone in weeks outside of Hollow alerts. He can barely recall his classmates' names. The boy who sits on his left during his mathematics discussion is Maeda – something. He doesn't need to know his name, he argues, not like he needed to know his high school classmates' names. And perhaps his need to be as bright and noble as possible has somewhat waned recently. The Vandenreich is still fresh on the minds of the people who know enough to identify a Quincy.

Orihime's decision to move across Tokyo to be closer to her university is quite understandable. The commute is long and having immediate access to Bunkyou's vast educational resources is as good a reason as any. He understands why Chad left for Kyoto to pursue a scientific passion, and why Ichigo left for Asahikawa to escape. What he doesn't understand is why he stayed.

He chased a Hollow down to the Kasazaki neighborhood a few weeks ago, almost through to Minamikawase near the river, and his muscles remembered running like this a long time ago at night. The phantom of Kuchiki Rukia's reiatsu hums on his skin. He catches glimpses of things sometimes, feels things that aren't there, like his memories are breaking out from his head to touch reality. He gets headaches sometimes when they're too vivid. Everywhere he goes it's like this, except when he's in Shinjuku and in the lab, so he spends as much time there as he can.

Everything he does makes him feel more like Ryuuken. Distant, alone, aloof, cold. He doesn't know what to do to counteract it. His isolation is self-imposed because he doesn't want to remember; he doesn't want to remember because it just makes him tired and stressed and opens up old anxieties. He thinks it is perhaps an insight into Ryuuken's psychology and doesn't particularly like being able to connect to him in any way.

Karakura after a storm is cold and gray and bleak for a week. The rainswept sidewalk is strewn with leaves, and the air is biting and clear. Trees hang heavy and dark with wet foliage. His bow arm aches. He has to wipe raindrops from his glasses when he comes back inside.

It's on these days that he's most compelled to drop everything and visit Bunkyou or take a train to Kyoto or cross the strait to Hokkaido and find someone and talk, for hours, pry open his chest and watch all of the anxiety and fear and anger and apathy pour out like water from a pitcher until all that's left is what he was before. He thinks that perhaps his exterior will melt away and leave a younger and more vibrant Uryuu in his place, like an insect freed from ancient amber. Like brass washed in vinegar and water. His flesh feels like dull weight and a thick shroud.

The first day of the break he cuts his hand on a knife and it all comes flooding into his head, vibrant memories of sensation and sight and smell and taste. It brings him to his knees on the kitchen floor and he can't move because the black length of steel in his stomach is dense and cruel and sharp like a razor trapped in his gut and he doesn't trust his balance without his left hand, and he feels the flow of reiatsu on him, strong and heavy as a thundering river. He knows he is still on the kitchen floor with the vegetable knife next to him and two whole arms but Ichigo's mask is cracking, Orihime is running to him as he falls. Then Tensa Zangetsu is torn from his body and he is thrown back into himself, and stares at the floor, trembling.

One day, two days. The world is spinning around him and he withdraws from it in desperation.

How could he forget to ask_? How do I do this without you? Who am I supposed to fight for if not you? Are you dreaming? Do you remember in your mind and in your body?_ And he knows the answer to each question but in his desperation he wants to hear it from someone else. Go north to Hokkaido, east to Bunkyou, south to Kyoto. Stop. Breathe. Listen. _You're not supposed to be like this. You're supposed to pick up and keep going. You're a Quincy, dammit. You're supposed to prove – _

He puts his head in his hands as the gray-white sky moves glacially, imperceptibly, outside his window.

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**A/N:** Oh my gosh you guys this was originally a backstory sketch for a different fic but then it grew into this whole thing. Tell me what you think?

Notes for each section:

1 – When a new era of peace begins, the phoenix makes itself new and descends to perform good deeds on earth.

2 – The tale of the tongue-cut sparrow describes a charitable man who cared for an injured sparrow. His wife, angry that he would waste food on such a useless endeavor, cut out the sparrow's tongue. The man was rewarded for his charity and the woman punished for her greed.

3 – The night sparrow is said to sing whenever the "escorting wolf" is near. The wolf resides in the mountains and guards travellers using the paths at night.

4 – The three-legged crow is a symbol of the sun, said to have guided the Emperor Jimmu to his new kingdom. Its appearance signifies divine intervention in the affairs of the mortal world.

I tried to check all of these with multiple sources!


End file.
